In Intermediate Fume FX, we jump right in the deep end, initially introducing a lot of the core concepts behind Fume FX and how Congruent Solvers work - such as Fume FX, Phoenix, Maya Fluids etc. all work.

These fundamental subjects are crucial to understanding fluids, as well as getting more hands on in learning the initial steps to how Fume FX works, as well as it’s interface and a lot of it’s powerful key features.

Throughout this workshop, all students will be challenged with a lot of high end content taken straight out of actual production shots from some of your favorite blockbuster Hollywood films. We cover a lot of key techniques and features used on a lot of todays latest feature films and look at a lot of the core knowledge that will be help in every case and allow you to take this knowledge further to apply in your own shots and on actual productions.

Intermediate Fume FX is designed for Intermediate and Advanced users, but each lesson is explained in a way that most people should be able to keep up. This is a must have for all FX enthusiasts!...

Professor: Allan McKay (allanmckay)

Class 1: A conceptual introduction to Fume FX & Fluids processes. Creating various examples and walking through the overall process of using Fume FX.

Class 2: Creating a realistic molotov cocktail thrown through air. This is based on a real production for a music video involving a slow motion molotov cocktail being thrown through the air, to match realistically and seamlessly to the filmed shots of fire.

Class 3: In this set of classes we create a realistic and menacing flamethrower matchmoved to live action footage, like we would in a real film production pipeline. Creating a high detailed look for the flame and realistic characteristics for this blockbuster effect!

Class 4: Continuing on from Class 3, we look at advanced techniques for rendering out our effects, as well as lighting our shots and taking these layers into Nuke to composite all of our layers and grade our entire shot to mimic what we would do in a film production.

Class 5: Creating realistic plasma, electrical and magical effects with Fume. Here we look at developing realistic plasma and other effects that are quite different in how they act, compared to the standardized fire that Fume is designed to create. We also look at methods to composite these elements in Nuke.

Class 6: Utilizing Krakatoa and particle advection with Fume FX, we simulate an object falling down onto the ocean floor, kicking up flux and dirt off of the ground realistically. Taking advantage of partitioning and other features. A great example is pirates of the Caribbean there s a great shot of when the pirates are walking under water of a close up foot disturbing the ground. This is actually a technique we developed for a few shots on superman for some underwater effects we were developing.

Class 7: Here we take last weeks fluid simulation data and pipe it through Krakatoa to generate realistic underwater sand shader generated from millions of particles, we also use various advanced shader techniques and Krakatoa’s KCM shader editor to develop the overall look of our effect, as well as later render and composite all of it together.

Class 8: Creating large scale smoke plumes- here we look at building highly detailed massive smoke for simulations as big as 30’ tall, such as used for massive oil smoke plumes and volcanoes. In addition we also cover advanced techniques for optimizing our fluid simulations!

Class 9: In our final lesson we take a real production shot of a tank, and create an action shot of a missile impacting on the tank, and destroying it in a massive explosion, using every tool & technique at our disposal!

Class 10: Continuing on from our last class, we develop additional fire and smoke layers, as well as render all of our passes out to composite into a realistic shot! This technique will utilize everything we have covered so far for a monster showpiece that will definitely look great on the reel!